Well before Florida was touched by European settlement, ancient peoples settled along the banks of Fisheating Creek and constructed a series of earthworks as part of their village complex. They built temple and burial mounds, middens, embankments, ditches, and a pond.

Archaeological excavations at the Fort Center site uncovered a wooden platform decorated with animal carvings, perfectly preserved at the muck at the bottom of the pond. The complex is thought to be from the Belle Glade people, circa 500 A.D., who built earthen mounds and actively cultivated maize. Finds of rare decorative objects adorned with metals salvaged from Spanish ships point to this village being occupied at least into the 1500s.

The archaeological complex opened to the public in 2008 and is now accessible via an interpretive trail at Fisheating Creek WMA, off Banana Grove Road near Lakeport. The name “Fort Center” comes from a Second Seminole War-era fort along Fisheating Creek, so there are layers of history in these woods. 

If you’re an archaeological buff, you’ll want to pick up a copy of Fort Center: An Archaeological Site in the Lake Okeechobee Basin, by William Sears (University Press of Florida). The book recounts Sears six years of archeological study at the site, and goes into deep detail about the artifacts found here and their context in pre-Columbian times.